


Watch Your Back

by KnightAniNaberrie



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: A Devil of My Word, Angst, F/M, Ghosts?, Guilt, Queen of short chapters apologizes and promises faster updates, is it a haunting or has Chloe snapped, reveal gone wrong, s3e24 alternate ending, tune in next time for more on the matter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22119433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightAniNaberrie/pseuds/KnightAniNaberrie
Summary: Trusting one’s gut is all fine and dandy, until instinctual reactions lead to nasty consequences.Or; Chloe reacts a little differently to Lucifer’s Devil face, and is quite literally haunted by it.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 11
Kudos: 79





	1. Hollow Trust Turn Casualties

**Author's Note:**

> Did Chloe even have her gun during this scene? Not sure, but if not, eh, that’s why it’s fiction.
> 
> Inspired by the Sam Tinnesz song Watch Your Back.

“Detective?”

_BANG!_

The body dropped, the terrible red skin and eyes of fire disappearing, and for half a second, Chloe felt like she could breathe again. Threat eliminated, monster gone.

In and out, in and out. Eyes closed, hands on her knees, head hung low. It was over, and everything was fine, really, it was. Despite the burning in her chest, she would live, she was okay because of-

Her eyes flicked open. There was a feather on the floor. White stained with red. She made to pick it up, changed her mind when a wave of dizziness struck her, and stood back up, eyes falling closed again. Sirens were slowly growing louder, back up getting closer. Everything was okay.

But then something clicked. Not entirely, but enough. Enough for Chloe to snap her gaze back to the carnage in front of her, enough for her to really look at the two bodies in the middle of the floor, enough for the one she just shot to start being disturbingly familiar.

The words _”I am the Devil”_ bounced around her mind and she did her best to shush them because no. That couldn’t be. He _wasn’t_. And she would _never_.

But she knew those clothes, and no matter how long she stared, the image didn’t change.

“Lucifer?” 

There was no response, and a chorus of “no no no no please NO” started up and she couldn’t tell if it was out loud or only in her head but it didn’t really matter.

She stumbled forward, crossing the room and falling to her knees and oh, there were so many more feathers over here, but the white was being drowned out by all the red, too much red, too much. . .

There was no charred nightmarish skin, no pulse, either. Brown eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, and Chloe felt herself slipping until she too looked upward, vision blurred and something wet running down her face.

She thought she heard someone call her name, several someones, actually. Some voices unfamiliar, and one rich accent she knew she’d never hear again, and then the darkness claimed her.

————————————————————

When she woke, it was in an ambulance, and despite the numerous people buzzing around her, asking her questions she knew she should be trying to answer, she could only focus on the impossible figure off to her right side.

He was acknowledged by no one, unusual for such a circumstance, and though doing so would put them directly in her line of sight, no one would enter his personal space, as if they knew they shouldn’t.

It had to be real, right? He had to be real. The paramedics would be all over her if he wasn’t. 

She felt the darkness coming on again, and stuck out a hand, touching nothing but air.

He didn’t move. Didn’t reach back, didn’t try to say anything, just watched with sad eyes as she allowed herself to be pulled back under.

Lucifer Morningstar was dead, and it was Chloe Decker that killed him.


	2. Hearing Footsteps In Your Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Words! And the vaguest hint of a plot in the distance.

The hospital was buzzing with activity when Dan arrived, yet it still took a good ten minutes for him to corner someone long enough to direct him to Chloe.

It had taken just over seven hours to get everything sorted out well enough to be able to come, between the man he and Ella had been holding to frequent calls over the scene to making sure Penelope was still successfully keeping track of Trixie. And then he had to find out he had been holed up in a dead man’s penthouse, hours after the fact, and for some unfathomable reason he couldn’t stop wondering if he’d left the balcony doors open.

The news had been meandering its way through the force, hitting in waves. Dan had heard from a broken up Ella, who persistently rang him until he’d put on the speaker phone in his car, already sworn off of work for the night and speeding his way to the hospital.

Dan held a lot of mixed feelings about the now late club owner. He’d been suspicious of him the entire time he’d known him, disliked him for most of it, hated some parts and considered them borderline friends others. He found the other man to be rude and arrogant and dangerous, and things had ended between them with Dan angry beyond belief, but he still didn’t want this outcome. No matter his thoughts, Lucifer had always been important to Chloe, and Chloe was important to Dan, and did one of them close those damn doors and why the hell couldn’t this elevator move any faster.

When the elevator eventually crawled to a stop, and the doors slowly crept open, and Dan had wandered around half the floor trying to find the right room, he found himself pausing just before the door. Through the silence of the level, Chloe’s voice carried, something confused and vaguely desperate in the tones.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please, I didn’t know I- you have to know I wouldn’t have- not-“

He knocked, and she cut off. For a moment more he remained still, listening, but there were no sounds signifying another person in the room, so he swung the door open, shutting it gently behind him. “Hey, Chlo.”

As he thought, the room was empty aside from Chloe who, despite acknowledging his greeting with a quiet “Dan,” didn’t look at him. Her eyes instead remained glued to the far corner of the room, closest to the window, wide and dare he say even mildly disturbed.

————————————————————-

From the moment she’d woken up, Lucifer had been there. Not saying a word, not interacting with anyone, lurking just outside of her reach.

There was a very good chance he was just a product of her trauma, some sort of stress induced hallucination or something, but after seeing what she’d seen (and had she even really seen that? Had it been her breaking point? Or even worse, merely the beginning of the hallucinations brought on by a different breakdown?) she wasn’t too certain. She had never believed in ghosts or anything before, but, well.

No one would go near him. Chloe was sure that none of them were seeing him, but still they all avoided his space, like the paramedics had, going out of their way sometimes to do so. If he was just a figment of her imagination, why was everyone suddenly taking the long way around the room?

Guilt. It had to be something to do with guilt. No one had been through yet to speak with her on what had happened. With their leader both dead and a crime boss, there was a lot going on. Plus, she had been unconscious for the majority of the day, so it would’ve been a fairly useless endeavor.

Regardless, if her mind was conjuring up a ghost, probably best to try and dissuade it.

“You’re not real, are you?” Her voice wasn’t as strong as she would have liked, but it didn’t seem to matter. He cocked his head to the side and oh, she’d seen that look before, the one silently asking if she was perhaps a little slow, and right now she could honestly say he might have a point.

“This can’t be happening. I- it’s because of what.. happened, right? Because I-“ she cut off, unable to make it entirely through the sentence, and now the sad look was back, and why couldn’t she make it go away? So that’s what she tried next.

Eyes closed, deep breaths. Recenter. It wasn’t happening, he wasn’t real. She had plenty of better things to focus on, so when she opened her eyes, he would be gone. Gone, gone, gone.

It didn’t work, or course. When Chloe opened her eyes next, Lucifer was still there, sad expression turned into something more concerned, and that wasn’t really what she’s call progress, but a change was a change.

“Look I. .” And whether it was all in her mind or not, somehow his full focus still sent a little shiver through her, as it very well should, considering. 

She had to face this. She knew she had to, but she couldn’t. Not when he was looking at her like that, not when she was the reason he was. .

Dead. He was dead. Chloe shot her best friend and killed him and yet he continued to stare at her and she was fairly certain she’d lost her mind along the way. Thinking about it was not helping, if anything it felt like it was making it worse. Dead and lost and _gone_ but not gone.

Lucifer’s sad look turned patient and Chloe broke a little more.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please, I didn’t know I- you have to know I wouldn’t have- not-“

A sharp knock had her breaking off, watching as Lucifer stared down the door, suddenly angry. Shit. Who was. . ?

“Hey, Chlo.” “Dan.” Of course it would be Dan.

The angry look didn’t fade after Dan had entered, though Chloe couldn’t tell if it was truly directed at her ex or not.

For awhile, no one said anything. Lucifer glared daggers at Dan, Chloe’s eyes never left Lucifer, and Dan watched Chloe, the two corporeal people in the room growing more concerned with each passing second. Finally, Dan sighed, and walked to the chair next to the bed, effectively inserting himself between his ex-wife and her fixation point.

Chloe actually flinched when Dan blocked Lucifer from her sight line, a small traitorous part of her whispering that perhaps that one action would be enough to send him away for good.

But no, he stepped to the side just enough for her to see, eyes bouncing between the two of them, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding before catching Dan’s frown out of her peripheral.

“Hey, sorry, it’s just. . Been a day.” She said, finally making an effort to focus on the real actual living person in the room. They locked eyes, and she relaxed a little more, though she couldn’t deny she was still tracking Lucifer in the background.

“Yeah, I know.” He reached out and took her hand, and suddenly Lucifer was right there, not even an inch behind Dan. The other man shivered, going so far as to glance behind himself, clearly seeing nothing and turning back around with a shake of his head. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Chloe. I can’t say I was overly fond of either of them bu-“

Simultaneously squeezing his hand and refocusing her gaze behind him (or really, at this point, with Dan seated and Lucifer lingering practically on top of him, above) she interrupted before he could continue. “No, it’s fine.” Because she couldn’t hear someone else talk about it, them, _him_. Not when he was standing not even three feet away and she was the reason no one knew it. “I mean it’s not, it’s definitely not, but.” She dropped off with a shrug, but Dan seemed to get it.

A tense silence settled around them, Dan appearing to become increasingly uncomfortable each minute. He kept glancing around, instincts screaming that there was a threat near, that he was being watched, but unable to locate the source. Chloe, meanwhile, kept trying to talk Lucifer down with her eyes. His intensity never faded, and just when she was about to call it quits and say something, Dan popped up and excused himself, clearly unnerved.

As soon as he was no longer touching Chloe, the murderous look vanished, and once he’d made it fully out the door, it was as if nothing had happened at all. 

“What the h- what was that?” She hissed, trying to keep her voice down in case Dan was still lingering outside (or anyone else, for that matter). But he just blinked at her, and Chloe thought she might scream.

Then. . Then he shrugged, a small but clear gesture, and if she had to name his expression it would be a cross between bewildered and apologetic.

“Are you real?” Barely a whisper. Another shrug. “Right, okay.” It wasn’t.

————————————————————

The reaction Dan had garnered only occurred with a few others over the next few days, and Chloe couldn’t see the pattern. She was sure that by this point Lucifer knew what it was, but he seemed about as willing to share that information as he was to share anything else, which was to say she was still completely in the dark.

She’d started referring to him as real, internally, after the first night. She wasn’t necessarily confident in that decision, but it felt more comfortable than constantly questioning her sanity. Besides, he seemed as real as she imagined a potential ghost/possible hallucination could be. Though he hadn’t spoken, they did interact.

What had at first been a one sided conversation and facial expressions was slowly expanding, and though he still most often wore the sadness she’d first seen, she was catching more and more bits of the Lucifer she knew coming through. Whether that was a good or bad thing remained to be seen.

Many from the LAPD had been through the previous day, including some from Internal Affairs, who apparently hadn’t made much of a decision on her yet. She wasn’t exactly in trouble, but she certainly wasn’t out of it either. But to be fair, she’d taken a page from her partner’s (dead, her dead partner) book, and only told half the truth. It was a heavy weight, not one she was sure she wanted to bear, but anytime she’d been about to tell the full version of things, Lucifer had become more active than she’d seen him, and after a few distracting moments she’d gotten the point and given an omitted version instead.

It left a bad taste in her mouth, but no worse than the one that was already there.

Dan had been back once, and he hadn’t stayed long. He hadn’t brought Trixie, either. She missed her monkey, but understood where her ex’s hesitation came from. Though Dan didn’t know what was going on, Chloe was a little nervous of how Lucifer might react to Trixie. He’d never had the best reactions to her in general, and now with there being no noticeable pattern as to what set him off, she was all for prolonging the encounter for as long as possible.

Maybe soon she’d find out what the hell was happening. Maybe.

Tomorrow, though, Chloe would get to go home, and maybe something would make sense.


End file.
